Charles Cooke, editorial associate for National Review, writes about low enthusiasm for same-sex marriage in places where it is legal, and about the high incidence of gay divorce:
"...Enthusiasm for marriage is somewhat lopsided by gender. Divorces, too. According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, two-thirds of legally recognized same-sex couples in the United States are lesbian. (Solely on the “marriage” front, in Massachusetts’s first four years, this statistic was 62 percent.) While data in the United States are clearly limited, Scandinavian countries have been at this a little longer. Denmark was the first country to introduce recognition of same-sex partnerships, coining the term “registered partnership” in 1989. Norway followed suit in 1993, and then Sweden in 1995. Again, Stockholm University’s study seems to confirm the American trend. In Norway, male same-sex marriages are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual marriages, and female same-sex marriages are an astonishing 167 percent more likely to be dissolved. In Sweden, the divorce risk for male-male partnerships is 50 percent higher than for heterosexual marriages, and the divorce risk for female partnerships is nearly double that for men. This should not be surprising: In the United States, women request approximately two-thirds of divorces in all forms of relationships — and have done so since the start of the 19th century — so it reasonably follows that relationships in which both partners are women are more likely to include someone who wishes to exit.
The debate over marriage does not necessarily hinge on its popularity among the eligible, and advocates of gay unions would no doubt assert that “equality” is not a numerical proposition as quickly as their opponents would aver that the very idea is a hopeless category mistake. But it is nonetheless worth noting that there is no particular groundswell — even in states and cities that have both legal gay marriage and significant numbers of homosexuals — and that, when gay couples do decide to get married, they are more likely than their straight equivalents to change their minds later." -- National Review
11 Comments
The same old misleading bunk the right like to feed to the weak of mind. In Scandinavia and the Netherlands, marriage took a nosedive in the 60s. And marriage gave way to registered partnership, all the same rights as marriage, but not the ceremony. Trying to blame SSM for what started decades before us a farce.
Once again, Pete responds without reading. The article talks about the lack of enthusiasm same-sex couples possess for marriage in places where it is legal, and their exorbitantly high divorce rates.
If you're going to attack the article on its merits, then do so. Don't neglect to read and then jump to make a stupid comment at the top of the thread that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
I won't be surprised if you're banned soon (but don't assume it's because your witty repertoire was too much for us to handle).
Since my first comment is in moderation, I'll just ask Pete: what is this article from the National Review about? Did you read it? Did you even read the first line of the blog entry? If so, how is your comment relevant to the content of the article?
So, because men file for only 1/3 of the divorces, does the logic extend that gay couples will have the lowest divorce rate?
Austin, no; the logic does not extend. As noted in the article, lesbians have the highest divorce rate, gays have the second highest, opposite-sex couples have the lowest.
We seem to have a lot of SSMers who like to comment without reading.
Ash, I read the article. Overall interest in marriage in Scandinavia has dropped, for heteros it started in the 60s. So the gays are now catching up.
Funny, you have no problems insulting others, why so bitter, Ash?
Marriage corruption supporters are just employing the Alinsky method:
If you do not like the subject matter change the subject.
And Ash, if you were to address all of those who post inaccuracies, you'd spend most of your day addressing your co-NOMers. Funny how you never admonish your own.
Pete, calling out your silly comments (of which you have a long record) is not an "insult."
You called the article "bunk" without even addressing it--accusing the authors of blaming ssm for the decline in marital interest, which they didn't do (you would've known this had you read the article).
Your first comment literally strikes me as one that someone might've accidentally placed on this thread, though intending to respond to an article on another thread. That's how wildly off-topic it was.
And, by the way, I think one of the points of the article is that gays are not "catching up" in terms of lack of marital interest. They came out the gate with extremely low marriage participation rates, though clamoring about it so much.
Let's say 100 straight couples get married. If 20 of them get divorced, that means that 20% of straight couples were divorced.
Now, let's say that, in the same time frame, 40 gay couples get married, and only 8 of them get divorced. That means that 20% of them have also been divorced.
If 10 gay couples got divorced, that means that 40% of gay couples were divorced. But that is still significantly less people.
Gay people count for 5% of our population. You cannot magically say that a ratio based on 5% can directly compare to a ratio based on 95%. Lesbians may look like they have the highest divorce rate in percentage when twisted this way, but they still hold the record for longest marriages in numbers of years and fair data analysis.
You straight folk have your own marriages issues to work on. Deal with yours, I'll deal with mine. And maybe instead of scaring gays away from God, you can accept them, teach them, and enable them to live a healthy life where divorce is overcome by spiritual strength in their relationship, whether you feel like theyre an abomination or not.
Actually LGBT people account for 3.5% of the population according to a UCLA study. And we do accept them, we accept them into our churches on the condition that they become straight. Heterosexuality isnt a privellidge! Its the norm! If none of us were straight wed all die out!!! stupid faggots